1. Choose the right language for the job. Fast prototyping, or just getting started? Python would be good. Need heavy performance? C++ or C#. Cross-platform? Java. It's good to do some critical research: don't just believe what someone says, there's a lot of bias against unknown languages. People talk too much about which language to choose anyway and few really know what they're talking about. There might be better languages for above tasks, for example, and many other factors to consider.

2. You don't need to use LUA. It's just another language. It's a scripting language, which makes it good for things that will likely change often, such as game-code (because you'll be tweaking that a lot in the end, depending on the sort of game, of course). It can, therefor, be a good choice, but it can also be overkill for your game. See 1.

3. You don't need to use DirectX. There's OpenGL, for example, but more important, the whole low-level rendering stuff has already been done for you by many people. Pick a solid framework or engine and focus on creating a game, not an engine.


It sounds like you're just getting started, and that game-development still feels somewhat like a mystery to you. I'd say, don't make things complicated for yourself. Just start building a simple game. Use SDL or Haafs Game Engine or something else, and focus on just writing a basic game. Tetris, for example, is little more than some blocks falling down in a grid, with some logic running behind it to check where it can move, and some reaction to user input, like rotating blocks. Nothing complicated, but go ahead and try to do it. I'm sure you'll learn a few things along the way.

What I mean to say is, you can ask for advice, read articles, and so on, but you'll need to get started somewhere, to experience what it is for real. Don't worry if you fail a few times: learn from your mistakes and try again. Good luck! :)

Instead of listing what you think you need to know, list what you actually know.

Assuming you are starting from zero knowledge (unless you've programmed before) I would recommend you drop your list and start learning python. Make a few text based games to get used to the way python works. When you are familiar with the language you can move on to making simple graphical games, pong etc.

From there you will be far better equipped to make the game you wish to make.

What happens when you run the resulting executable manually? It should display a black window, with a quickly fading HGE logo, which terminates when you press the escape button. That's all that that code should do.

Anyway, I'd suggest using an IDE for development purposes: a solid IDE like Visual C++ (the 2005 Express Edition is free) provides you with a compiler, a debugger and an array of tools that you'll find very helpfull, such as code completion and such. To set up HGE with an IDE, check this page.